WHEN the semi-naked body of pretty Barbara Forrest was found dumped in picturesque parkland more than 35 years ago, it sent shockwaves around Birmingham.

WHEN the semi-naked body of pretty Barbara Forrest was found dumped in picturesque parkland more than 35 years ago, it sent shockwaves around Birmingham.

But amateur sleuths uncovered a series of bizarre coincidences with another murder of a young woman Mary Ashford more than a century and half earlier suggesting history had a chilling habit of repeating itself in the most brutal fashion.

The murder of 20-year-old Barbara Forrest on May Bank Holiday Monday the child-care worker had been out with her boyfriend visiting pubs in Handsworth and Birmingham city centre.

As the evening drew to a close he had walked her to a bus stop in Colmore Circus before making his way across the city to catch his own bus home to Moseley.

He was the last known person to see the child nurse and Lutheran Church youth worker alive.

Days later on June 4, a man discovered her body on the edge of Pype Hayes park, just a few feet away from the busy Chester Road, buried beneath bracken in a shallow ditch.

The scene, about 500 yards from where she lived, was quickly cordoned off and a murder investigation was launched by one of the force’s most experienced detectives, Det Supt Mick Lenehan.

The news of the discovery turned the worst fears of her Northamptonshire family into reality.

Her German-born mother Margarete Forrest, said: “She was a wonderful girl. This is the sort of thing you hear of happening but never think it can happen to you.”

As the murder investigation continued, it was hampered by any sighting of her after her boyfriend had left her at the bus-stop.

None of the other passengers on the No 67 service remembered seeing her and detectives weren’t even sure she had caught the night bus.

While that suggested she had either been abducted or had been given a lift by someone she knew, there was also the theory that the killer had pounced on her after she stepped off the bus.

A reconstruction of Barbara’s last known movements was held with a policewoman, dressed in similar clothing to the victim, making the ten-minute walk from the Tyburn Road bus-stop to her home.

Posters printed by the Evening Mail were also placed in the area.

The criminal underworld was asked to assist and police informants were contacted in a bid to obtain any intelligence that might help identify her killer.

Warning other women to be on their guard, Det Supt Lenehan said: “We cannot ignore the fact that there is someone about who is capable of doing something like this.”

Eventually a witness came forward who had seen a blue car parked near where the body had been found - at a time when Barbara would have met her death.

More than 100 detectives were involved in the original Barbara Forrest investigation.

Eventually, a suspect was identified and interviewed by senior detectives.

Michael Thornton worked at the same children’s home as Barbara and was eventually charged with her murder.

Birmingham Crown Court heard that blood was found on his trousers and his mother had given his a false alibi.

But seven days into his trial Thornton was acquitted when Mr Justice Croom-Johnson directed the jury to return a not guilty, ruling the evidence against him was nothing more than circumstantial.

Both deaths occurred on or in the hours after Whit Monday in the Erdington area. Both victims were unmarried and 20. Both had been left for dead. Both were returning from dances. Both were last seen alive on the 27th of May.

And a man was acquitted of Mary’s murder was named ... Thornton.

PRETTY Mary Ashford was probably considered the belle of the parish.

After a day at work, she and her friend Hannah Cox went to the highlight of their social year, the big dance at the Tyburn House Inn.

They are believed to have left at about midnight and walked back to Hannah’s house.

Hours later factory worker George Jackson was walking from Erdington to work as a wiremaker in Penn’s Mill, not far from what is now known as Pype Hayes Park.

Cutting across the grass he saw a puddle of blood that seemed to be trampled through the grass and marked by two pairs of feet, one large as a man’s, the other smaller that led towards a gravel pit.

Lying submerged in the dirty water was Mary Ashford.

An examination found the she had been sexually assaulted before being thrown into the pit where she drowned.

It was known that during the evening before, Mary had been in the company of 25-year-old farmer and builder Abraham Thornton, from Castle Bromwich, and a special constable was sworn in to arrest Thornton.

In an example of early forensics, a nail in his boot was said to have fitted the impressions made in the grass near the marl pit.

Thornton was soon in Warwick jail, where he had been held after several days in Birmingham.

In August that year, he was tried for murder. On the evidence presented, the jury returned a not guilty verdict, taking just six minutes to reach their verdict.

Supporters of the Ashford family set up a fund to bring Thornton to retrial – a move that saw the case make legal history. At the second hearing at the Old Bailey, the mob besieged the court house to hear Thornton issue a strange challenge that dated back to medieval times.

“I am not guilty,” he said, “and I will defend myself with my body.”

At this point, he threw down the gauntlet as proof he was prepared to fight for his honour. If he lost, he would be hanged. If he won the fight, he would be acquitted. He issued this challenge to his accuser, Mary’s brother William. Ashford refused to accept the challenge from Thornton and expressed his intention of counter pleading.

Thornton was again charged with the Ashford murder.

Again, he pleaded not guilty but this time Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough delivered the final judgement that the defendant be discharged.

But he was hounded from England. His first attempt to leave the country was thwarted when his fellow passengers discovered his identity and refused to sail with him. He later settled in New York, married, prospered and died.

As for Mary, she lies in Sutton Coldfield churchyard under a gravestone with the now illegible inscription: “As a warning to female virtue and a humble monument to female chastity this stone marks the grave of Mary Ashford who on the twentieth year of her age having incautiously repaired to a scene of amusement without proper protection was brutally murdered on 27th May 1817.”